


Room to Breathe

by PoorUnfortunateSoul



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Post-season 7, Supportive Keith (Voltron), but it can be if you want, this isn't meant to be shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-26 00:06:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15651708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorUnfortunateSoul/pseuds/PoorUnfortunateSoul
Summary: “That’s exactly my point. I just don’t think you’ve gotten time to process it.”“Do we ever get time?” Shiro asks. “I mean, Romelle was right. All we ever do is move on.”“Yeah, and look where that’s gotten us,” Keith snorts. “Look, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to; I just thought I’d offer, so it doesn’t blow up on you later.”______——————______Or, Keith gives Shiro time to grieve.





	Room to Breathe

Shiro didn’t really have expectations when he set off to visit Keith’s hospital room. If anything, he thought that he’d just ask how Keith was, maybe talk through plans for moving forward with him. A lot had happened in the past couple of days, and a lot more is going to happen. They all have a lot to talk about.

Somehow, even with having little to no expectations, he’s still thrown off when Keith asks his mother to leave the room. They share a knowing look that makes Shiro feel a bit nervous as she leaves the room. Keith adds to the nervousness when he watches Shiro move to sit down.

Keith can come off as intense without intending to. They’ve talked about it before, so Shiro knows that a lot of the intensity is just him staring dumbly at someone because he doesn’t know what to say. This look isn’t that, though. This look is his ‘we’re going to talk, right here, right now’ look. It’s intentionally intense, and that makes it worse.

“Is this about something in particular, or?” he asks, as Keith moves to sit up straight.

“It’s about Adam,” Keith says, adjusting his bandages.

“Adam?” Shiro asks, surprised. “He’s dead, Keith.”

Keith sighs when he can’t find a comfortable position for his bandages, and flops back against the wall.

“That’s exactly my point. I just don’t think you’ve gotten time to process it.”

Shiro almost laughs, but the look Keith’s giving him kills it in his throat. He’s completely serious.

“Do we ever get time?” Shiro asks. “I mean, Romelle was right. All we ever do is move on.”

“Yeah, and look where that’s gotten us,” Keith snorts. “Look, you don’t have to talk about if you don’t want to; I just thought I’d offer, so it doesn’t blow up on you later.”

Shiro looks down at his hands. Keith stays quiet, letting him think.

“I never stopped caring about him,” Shiro starts, slowly.

“I know.”

Shiro looks up at Keith. He’s leaned forward, paying all his attention to Shiro.

“Even after the break-up, I still cared. I mean, we were going to get _married_ , Keith. You don’t get over something like that in a few months, unless something dire happened.”

Keith nods, like he understands. Shiro thinks about his mom, and the impact her leaving had on Keith. He thinks that, just maybe, he does get it. To some extent.

“We didn’t break-up because we stopped caring about each other. It was the opposite really; we cared too much. We weren’t bad for each other, we weren’t toxicity in each other’s lives. The time, and circumstances just weren’t on our side. In another life, with another body, he’d be the one. Just not this life.”

He stops to take a breath, and Keith offers him his hand. Shiro takes it, and Keith squeezes his hand in encouragement.

“When I saw him on that wall, time stopped for me. I’d moved on from what we had, but I hadn’t moved on from him. I wanted to come back and see him thriving, to see him happy in his career and starting the family he’d always wanted. But I knew, that just because time stopped for me, that didn’t mean that it’d stopped for everyone else. I needed to move along, just like we always do.”

Keith squeezes his hand again.

“I know, Shiro,” he says, quietly. “That’s why I’m offering you this time now. We don’t need to move on, right now. Time can stop for us, for _you,_ for a little while. Please, let it.”

Shiro let’s out a slow breath, and nods. He lets everything he’d been shoving down to the surface, and his emotions run ramped. He feels anguish, devastation, loss, incensed, cheated. Maybe Adam wasn’t his future, but he needed Adam to have one, and now he can’t.

Adam spent a lot of their time together savoring each moment, preparing himself for when Shiro was gone. Shiro never once stopped to prepare himself for a reverse situation. Adam should still be _here_ , nagging someone else about their bad cooking and how bad a plan is, but still going along with none-the-less. Adam loved to say “I told you so” with a tone of voice so enamored that all you wanted to do was, was fuck something up again. He deserve to be another picture on the wall.

“It hurts,” he gasps, like the tears on his face wasn’t saying that for him.

“I know,” Keith says, with another squeeze.

Feeling these emotions is a hurt he wasn’t prepared for. They make him breathless, and achy. It’s an all around miserable experience.

But the time to grieve gives him the space to stand back up again. He’s going to get up, and make Adam’s sacrifice mean something, aching but clear headed.

And he doesn’t have to do it alone; he can do it, with Keith’s hand in his.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I know a lot of people are like "Why did Pidge get time to grieve Matt's fake death but Shiro got like two seconds for Adam" & my immediate response was because Pidge had time??? She could stop and grieve because she had time for it, Shiro learns that Adam is dead in the middle of a highly intense time??? He didn't have time to focus on it?
> 
> Probably would've killed the inversion for me if he stopped in the middle of a war zone to make it about him, but I get that not everyone took literal classes on writing and how/when to write characters emotions, so I made this instead of a Tumblr post because the fandom terrifies me. 
> 
> So hopefully this makes someone get my point without threatening to kill me or say that I'm a huge homophobe that doesn't understand. Because I'm a part of the LGBTQ+ community, and I get what was fucked up this season, but this point just didn't make sense to me as a writer asdfghjkl;
> 
> Also I'm sorry if there's already 7284897 fics about this already, I always actively avoid the fandom as best as I can the first few weeks after a new season because it's always a scary shit storm. I love the fandom most of the time, but you gotta admit the first few weeks after are Always Rough. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Tumblr.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pastel-seris)


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